The Economic History Podcast

This week, Professor Stephen Broadberry shares insights from his extensive work in constructing national accounts over the very long run, to answer contemporary debates. When did the Great Divergence occur? Why does structural change matter and what did it imply for leading economies of the last century? Finally, we look at the implications of economic the frequency and magnitude of economic shrinking for developing countries.

In this episode, we meet Prof. Jane Humphries and discuss her extensive research on women in the workforce. We discuss changes in the relative position of female casual workers and annually contracted workers and tackle hypotheses of the potential causes (and validity) of the "male breadwinner" model, before and after the Industrial Revolution. We also consider a reinterpretation of historical living standards, based upon using annual, rather than daily wage measures. 

In this episode, we meet Prof. Patrick Wallis to discuss some of his previous work on pandemics and plagues. We look at the comparative magnitudes of some of the worst disease outbreaks and discuss how the perceptions of pandemics, the norms around personal responsibility and the nature of policy responses have all evolved over time. We also consider the nature of media reporting across cases and how government action may have been influenced by the socioeconomic status of the initial sufferers.  

This week, we chat with Professor Morten Jerven on the weakness of data in developing economies. We discuss the history of political machinery behind final economic statistics, the misaligned incentives facing data collectors and providers and the inconsistency between key international databases. We also discuss the comparative lack of funding for statistical agencies in developing countries, given the gigantic tasks facing them, and finish with how much it might cost to improve statistical capacity to a relatively acceptable level.

In this episode, we are joined by Prof. Nicholas Crafts. Nick covers the interwar period, the Great Depression, the Golden Age and Secular Stagnation. We also discuss the "social capabilities" of economies and the idea that an appropriate "institutional fit" for one economic age will not necessarily be the correct configuration to exploit the opportunities of the next epoch.

In this episode, we chat with Professor Cormac Ó Gráda about his new work that re-interprets the causes and mechanisms underlying the Industrial Revolution. We also consider the profound economic and human dislocation that resulted from the extreme economic shock of the Irish Famine during the same period, comparing it with other such events across the globe through economic history.

In this episode, Dr. Carl Benedikt Frey discusses the relationship between technological breakthroughs and the varying responses from Labour over the long run. We discuss whether we are currently entering another 'Engel's Pause', contrasting labour replacing versus labour augmenting technologies and consider the political challenges they leave in their wake.

In this episode, Professor Lisa Cook talks about her work on measuring the economic costs of discrimination. We discuss the lost output resulting from the large volume of "missing" patents (equivalent to a medium-sized European country's) due to racial violence and institutionalized discrimination. We also discuss the macroeconomic consequences of discrimination against African Americans and women at each stage of the innovation process.

In this episode, we chat with François Velde about his work on great debasements, sudden deflations in France, and lottery punters paying more for uncertain, rather than certain, payoffs.

This week, we chat with Dr. Kerstin Enflo about her research on the economic causes and effects of artificially planted towns, regional inequality and the impact of technological changes on the labour force.